A good way to master basic pizza dough making techniques is from Vito Iacopelli. Delicious, open crust, crispy pizza can absolutely be made using whole grain flours and a home oven. In fact the fresh, wheaty flavor of stone ground heritage grains is so good you probably won’t want to to go back to white flour pizza again, and it will be full of vitamins, mineral, and antioxidants unlike white flour.

One of the keys to successful pizza at home using whole flours is making sure the dough gets fully hydrated. The more bran in your flour the more water and hydration time the dough will need. The poolish technique can help ensure flours with high amounts of bran in them have enough time and water to be hydrated and will perform as well or better than any white flour.

This pizza dough recipe is a summary of the process shown in Vito’s videos and can be made using any of our hard wheat flours in a conventional kitchen oven. Once you can make a basic pizza dough the door is open to making an unlimited variety of meals using different shapes and toppings.

Recommended Tools

• Pizza Stone

• Pizza Peel

Ingredients for the Poolish

• 150 g stone ground hard wheat flour such as Appalachian White Wheat Flour or Red Fife Flour

• 150 ml water or enough water to make the mixture like a thick soup.

• 1 quarter TSP of any dry yeast

Ingredients for the Pizza Dough

• All of your poolish warmed to room temperature

• 280 g stone ground hard wheat flour such as Appalachian White Wheat Flour or Red Fife Flour

• 200 ml water. The amount of water here is flexible. More water added means a more sticky and open dough and faster fermentation. Higher hydration doughs can be more tricky to work with but make excellent pizza.

• 1 tsp dry yeast

• 2 tsp salt

Poolish Instructions

1. Mix the flour, water and yeast together. The mixture should have the consistency of a very thick liquid..

2. Put the mixed ingredients in a sealed container in the refrigerator overnight to ferment (about 16-18 hours)

Bulk Pizza Dough Instructions

1. Take the poolish out of the fridge and allow to get to room temperature for about an hour.

2. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a bowl or stand mixer until all ingredients are equally incorporated.

3. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes.

4. If using a stand mixer kneed with a dough hook for about 15 minutes on low until dough is strong and can stretch in your hands about an inch before breaking. If not using a stand mixer use the stretch and fold method to kneed dough. Try not to tear the dough as part of the kneading process.

5. Put in a bowl, cover, and allow to sit at room temperature for about 1.5 hours or until it has about doubled in size. The amount fermentation time depends on the temperature and weather.

Pizza Dough Ball Instructions

1. Allow your oven to heat up to 500 degrees for an hour before cooking your pizza.

2. Sprinkle the dough with a little flour for handling, remove from the bowl, and divide the dough into 3 approximately equal parts for 3 small pizzas.

3. Shape into balls and allow to ferment covered for about an hour.

4. Dust a ball with flour and place on a pizza peel coated with flour or semolina. To shape, press outward towards the edges of the dough with your fingers then your hand to flatten the center but not the edges.

5. Top with what you like, and bake on a pizza stone at the highest temperature possible. If you prefer you can bake for about 10 minutes then add cheese on top and bake some more to prevent the cheese from burning. The pizza will be done when crust starts to burn on the bubbles. It is important to burn the pizza at least a little.